Fort Worth Explosions? Just WTF is going here?

One of the main questions about this is WHAT CAUSED THE MULTICOLORED explosions? Are transformers created with different raw materials that explode
in varied colors? Can the same transformers explode over and over again without repeated lightning strikes? Can this activity go on for such a
period of time without a "fresh" strike to provide more electricity?

The article in the STAR TELEGRAM provides eye-witness accounts. Star Telegram columnist Bob Ray Sanders said that whatever it was, it was dramatic.
"I've seen lightning strike, and this was no lightning," he said. "It may have been precipitated by lightning strikes." At home, he said he
saw, "blazes up in the air... fire in the sky and on the ground... 10 or 12 explosions... like someone dropping bombs."

So, we have a journalist who happens to live right where this is happening, providing an eye-witness account that differs from the official story.
The video itself seems more intense than transformer destruction. The light is very intense, not explosion-like, really, and makes a pronounced
appearance into the sky. More than you'd expect from sparking transformers. Further, this continues for SOME TIME without any lightning striking
again.

"Fireballs in the sky" as reported seems to imply that people saw fireballs in the sky, and would have nothing to do with a camera. Ball lightning
although not well understood is however real, I have seen it myself and is completely plausible, (and natural) in this case.

I live in Fort Worth, grew up in Arlington (Six Flags is in Arlington) Trust me, it was not Six Flags. Arlington is in the middle of Dallas and Fort
Worth. (D/FW) It is approx 20 miles from Arlington to downtown Fort Worth, and about 20 miles from Arlington to downtown Dallas. In addition- Six
Flags is closed this week and opens tomorrow (Friday 13th eeek)

The lights went on for a good hour- I am in south Fort Worth. Almost seemed like an electrical storm. The lights actually seemed very close to
Carswell Air Force Base from my point.

Also, if you have been following the BEAMS, I remember looking at the radar a
couple of days ago and thinking what the heck? There wasn't a cloud outside when I viewed the above linked radar! Then we got slammed with storms
after the next couple of days. We were beamed!! Seriously though, disturbing.

Yes the colours are dependent on the material -ie:copper the blueish flashes/ white being magnesium or aluminum. The liquid dielectric insulator in
some of the other transformers will burn yellow and greenish depending on the chemicals involved.

The amazing thing about all this is that their main distribution didn't cut out and all the transformers feeds didn't get cut with their
overload/overcurrent protection.

The lights/transformers were bright and a wide range of colors. After the big storm, the sky turned a very bright yellow- and the clouds were crazy.
Ominous and tornadic looking. I have not seen the sky this shade of yellow in all the 30 years living here. It almost seemed like a neon yellow. It
was not pretty, it was eerie.

I hope you guys are right and it was simply just a straight 90 minutes of transformers blowing out. I did not hear any booms/explosions, quiet. I
thought it was an electrical storm from my location. Thanks for all the posts, I have not seen anything in the local news about this, of course.

Looks like the sort of light show put on at Glastonbury here in the UK, was Ozzy playing a concert by any chance.
Just thought of mentioning this as the light shows at Glastonbury can be seen for miles as your arriving at the site.

well...I never could have imagined that THIS is what it would look like for transformers to explode what seems like over and over and over again all
the while the surrounding city lights remain completely unaffected?? And apparently in Texas birds chirp at night?

That is for sure some weird footage, if someone were to show me that and explain what it is, I don't think exploding transformers would have come to
mind...not for something like this anyway.

Bombing? Nah, although if you were to bomb me I'd like it to look something like that! So pretty

But the question remains, what the hell happened? Transformers blowing like that, I dunno, I'm no expert like Mr Tranny, but my gut tells me thats no
transformer blowing over and over again. Something else is up.

Originally posted by aleeyoyo
I live in Fort Worth, grew up in Arlington (Six Flags is in Arlington) Trust me, it was not Six Flags. Arlington is in the middle of Dallas and Fort
Worth. (D/FW) It is approx 20 miles from Arlington to downtown Fort Worth, and about 20 miles from Arlington to downtown Dallas. In addition- Six
Flags is closed this week and opens tomorrow (Friday 13th eeek)

The lights went on for a good hour- I am in south Fort Worth. Almost seemed like an electrical storm. The lights actually seemed very close to
Carswell Air Force Base from my point.

Also, if you have been following the BEAMS, I remember looking at the radar a
couple of days ago and thinking what the heck? There wasn't a cloud outside when I viewed the above linked radar! Then we got slammed with storms
after the next couple of days. We were beamed!! Seriously though, disturbing.

Whoa, this light show went on for an hour? Is that normal Mr. Tranny? God, I hope not! I wanna talk to the poor people trapped in that light show
cage. I actually wonder if those lights actually caused anyone to have a heart attack, a seizure, and how did their pets take to all this? I know of a
few dogs that would have heart attacks if this went on for an hour. His name is Marley

I would like to see a daytime picture of that area again as it's hard to tell the scale of the scene in which this #s going down. The thing that
keeps me wondering is the audio in the footage and how insanely long this went on, I see it says 30 min ish? Holy crap what type of distribution do
they have there, seems to be an outright failure of all system protection, at fort worth?

I'm not trying to jump to any conclusions here but could the electrical going telefunken be attributed to something other than a HV surge from a
supply which should in theory be protected from... well ....this.

I used to live in that area and now live in Central Texas. Texas runs neck and neck with Florida with the air to ground lightening strikes. So if
you are new to Texas, or traveling to the area and the weather person says be on the look out for air to ground lightening... they are serious and not
playing around.

The DFW area has been slammed with storms for the last few days, Central Texas got hit last night. Lots and lots of air to ground lightening and the
storms were training up and down I 35 last night. And you can have lightening without thunder. It's just the way weather rolls around Texas.

I know, not fun stuff for the 'what the hell is that?!' line of thinking. But wanted to add the info.

Yes, it can go on for minutes, hours, days, or even years, depending on the situation. Series arcs (arcs in series with the normal load) will not trip
overload protection. And depending on the circuit voltage, and the voltage drop of the arc, it may not even create a noticeable dimming of the lights
at the customer end. Usually the effects will be a light flickering of the lights. Or the occasional twinkle that may be barely perceptible.

Depending on how much current the load is drawing (which determines the arc current) the arc may cause quick damage, or persist for a long time. If it
is drawing a lot of current (100 to 1000 amps) Then it will usually burn through things quickly. It will either burn the circuit open where the load
will lose power. Or it will burn it’s way through stuff until the arc comes in contact with a grounded object (if it’s a arcing hot phase), or
burn it’s way into a hot phase (if it is an arcing ground) When that happens, then it will cause a direct fault which will trip over current devices
and kill the power to the circuit which will kill the arc.

If it is a low current arc in the range of 5, 10, 15, or even 20 amps, and it is arcing between two sizable metal objects, then it can literally go on
for years, until someone sees it, and calls the utility.

Most likely, the people that were being supplied by the line that was creating the light show had perfectly usable power to their homes when the show
was going on. They probably wouldn’t even notice anything going on unless they stuck their heads outside and seen the lights. They would lose power
when the utility killed the power to the line to fix the problem.

That is one of the main reasons it went on so long. Everyone was standing outside going “wow look at those lights” instead of calling the utility.
Since everyone had power, then why call the power company? Some poor sole finally decided to call the utility and tell them they had a problem, and to
come down and check things out.

It is like those couple videos where underground transformer vaults were arcing. The street lights that were lighting the city street, and the
buildings with lights on around that area, were most likely running off the very vault that was creating the light show. If the video had ran long
enough to see when the utility killed the power to that vault, you would have seen most of the area around that vault go dark. The power the
buildings, and street lights were pulling was what was feeding the arc in the first place.

That is the problem with a series arc. Unless you see it in person, there is no way to tell that it is happening.It will not show up on monitoring
equipment! If you ever see one on a pole or some where else on a utility system, get on the dang phone and tell someone! The utility has no way of
finding it out unless you tell them!

Like this arcing closed cutout.

Unless a line truck happens to drive by and sees it, or a person is sent to operate the disconnect and sees the problem before he pulls the
disconnect, then they will not know!

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